photo credit: outofdbox
This is a continuation of an earlier post How a Lean Six Sigma Certification will Boost your Career.
As a refresher, Lean management promotes less waste, decreased cycle times, reduced complexity of processes and lower costs.
While the Six Sigma methodology is one that combines quality with process improvement. It seeks to reduce errors in processes and systems to around 3.4 errors (or defects) per million opportunities and minimizing variation. This results in a customer’s experience of near perfection thereby leading to customer satisfaction.
So what IS variation? What IS waste?
Variation refers to the variation from the mean of the measured values that the customer experiences.
For example, a customer might go to Bank A three times in May and stand in line for 4, 3 and 3.5 minutes respectively.
He may also go Bank B three times in May and stand in line for 2, 7 and 18 minutes respectively.
You can see that he experiences a wider range of variation at Bank B. For this reason, he is more likely to prefer going to Bank A.
So a company must figure out how to provide what is within customer specifications AND how to reduce variation in services, products and processes.
Waste (also known by the Japanese word Muda) can be defined as any activity that uses resources but adds no value to the process or its output.
There are 7 types of waste (TIMWOOD).
- Transport
- Inventory
- Motion
- Waiting
- Over-processing
- Over-production
- Defect.
Want to know more about Lean Six Sigma (LSS)? Enroll with OutofdboxConsult. Call: 07083384605
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